High Performance Organizations

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Public Groupactive 1 year, 11 months ago

A place to discuss the principles of High Performance Organizations and interact with other professionals who have been successful in implementing HPO principles, or are seeking to, in their organizations

Thomas Kuhn, the noted American professor of the philosophy and history of science, is best known for his work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which sold over 1 million copies in 16 languages. The book challenged conventional thinking that scientific change was strictly a rational process. It also popularized use of the term "paradigm", as the mental model or framework scientists use to explain laws of nature. Paradigms are essential for learning and continuously improving upon theories and their applications.

However, paradigms are also very limiting. According to Kuhn, "What a person sees depends upon what he looks at and what his previous experience has taught him." Many scientists – especially those with the most time and training invested in an established scientific discipline – resist new paradigms that challenge their established view of how the world works. They often ignore or just don't see new contradictory evidence that doesn't fit their paradigm.

The discussion about paradigms, which is only part of the article, reminds me of when I first heard about paradigm shifts. The example used was the reason behind the shift from Swiss watchmakers being replaced by the Japanese as the premier watchmakers in the world. The reason was they refused to believe outside their paradigm ... that quality watches had to be made of the time-tested (no pun intended) components that they had developed and used for decades (centuries?). The Japanese proved otherwise.